Health and Fitness

Thursday, April 20, 2017

In part it is about control. I can't control your body, but I can control mine. Control is good. Power is good. Physical culture is the gaining and maintaining of power over that part of the physical world that is one's physical self.

Self-mastery, as the highest mastery, must include mastery of the vehicle of one's subjectivity. Control of one's vehicle is a clear desideratum. So stretch, run, hike, bike, swim, put the shot, lift the weight.

In short: rouse your sorry ass from the couch of sloth and attend to your vehicle. 'Ass' here refers to Frate Asino, Brother Jackass, St Francis' name for his body. Keep him in good shape and he will carry you and many a prodigious load over many a pons asinorum.

(It is interesting that the German Arsch, when it crossed the English Channel became 'arse,' but in the trans-Atlantic trip it transmogrified into the polyvalent 'ass.' Whatever you call it, get it off the couch.)

Thursday, October 23, 2014

The public-health establishment has unanimously opposed a travel and visa moratorium from Ebola-plagued West African countries to protect the U.S. population. To evaluate whether this opposition rests on purely scientific grounds, it helps to understand the political character of the public-health field. For the last several decades, the profession has been awash in social-justice ideology. Many of its members view racism, sexism, and economic inequality, rather than individual behavior, as the primary drivers of differential health outcomes in the U.S. According to mainstream public-health thinking, publicizing the behavioral choices behind bad health—promiscuous sex, drug use, overeating, or lack of exercise—blames the victim.

We need ideological quarantine to keep sane but susceptible people from being infected by pernicious ideological viruses. I mean, how willfully stupid can a willfully stupid liberal be? And should we allow liberals around the impressionable and uncritical? We need to think about appropriate measures for social prophylaxis.

And what exactly is wrong with blaming the victim, within limits? As you might expect, I have written a post on this topic entitled, as again you might expect, On Blaming the Victim.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

A hard-hitting piece by Joseph Curl exposes the PeeCee Prez for what he is: a disaster whose ever-increasing incompetence is about to turn deadly.

Someone should explain to Obama why we have borders and why they must be enforced. Is he really as stupid as his actions and inactions show him to be, or is he a hate-America leftist that does all he can to destroy the country?

Suppose Ebola spreads into Central America and Mexico. Where do you think people will flee to? But even if the Ebola virus does not penetrate Central America, refugees from those regions bring with them tropical diseases that we are not prepared for. Did Obama and his advisors give any thought to that?

Apparently not. The fool prefers to joke about the border problem. Contemptible! And of course nothing he says in that clip, except the alligators in moats joke, can be taken seriously since he lies about almost everything. Curl concludes:

The White House has repeatedly used one word to describe the administration's response to the Ebola crisis: "Tenacious."

The real word that applies though is "mendacious." Or "fallacious." Any other claim is audacious.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Your post on why the left “went ballistic” over the Hobby Lobby case was well-done as usual, and I for one was grateful for your emphasis that the so-called contraceptives in question were really abortifacients, and that the latter is not a proper adjective for the former. I do have a couple of questions/comments though.

First, about the left and religion. While I don’t like the politics or the theology of people like Jim Wallis of Sojourners or the President’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright, it certainly seems that they are really religious and their politics flow from their faiths. I’m inclined to say that they have a mistaken anthropology and overvalue one understanding of justice at the expense of other legitimate senses, but wouldn’t say that they’re not really religious or that their true religion is leftism. (Well, maybe if I knew more about Wright’s theology I would say that about him. But I don’t believe that all lefties who claim to be Christians are just faking it and make a god out of the state and/or left-wing politics.)

Second, the statement that “they don't have the right to use the coercive power of the state to force others to pay for them when the contraceptives in question violate the religious beliefs of those who are forced to pay for them” seems to be overdrawn, at least if it’s generalized. If a Jehovah’s Witness owns a business, does he have the right to refuse to pay for an employee’s insurance when it pays for a blood transfusion? What about a pacifist being forced to pay taxes to support a war effort (especially one that doesn’t involve direct national self-defense)? There are all sorts of things we’re forced to pay for even though they violate our moral and religious beliefs, and while we can sometimes successfully fight those challenges (when, e.g., it poses an “undue burden”) there are other times when we must knuckle under unless we wish to engage in civil disobedience.

Maybe I will get to the first objection later.

Here is a very blunt response to the second. If you are opposed on moral grounds to blood transfusions, then you hold a position that is not morally or intellectually respectable. Therefore, IF the government has the right to force employers to provide health insurance that covers blood transfusions for employees, THEN it has the right to violate the beliefs of a Jehovah's Witness when it comes to blood transfusions. And the same goes for pacifism. If pacifism is the view that it is always and everywhere wrong to kill or otherwise harm human beings, then I say you hold a view that is not morally or intellectually respectable. I could argue this out at great length, but not now; I told you I was going to be blunt.

Note, however, that the blood transfusion case as described by Monokroussos is importantly different from the pacifism case. The first case arises only if something like the PPACA -- ObamaCare -- is in effect . I say the bill should never have been enacted. Government has no right to force private enterprises to provide any health insurance at all to their employees, and no right to force workers to buy health insurance, and no right to specify what will and will not be covered in any health insurance plan that employers provide for their employees.

The pacifism case is much more difficult because it arises not from a dubious law but from the coercive nature of government. I believe that government is practically necessary and that government that governs a wide territory wherein live very diverse types of people must be coercive to do its job. Moreover, I assume, though I cannot prove, that coercive government is morally justified and has the moral right to force people to do some things whether or not they want to do them and whether or not they morally approve of doing them. Paying taxes is an example. Suppose you have a pacifist who withholds that portion of his taxes that goes to the support of what is perhaps euphemistically called 'defense.' Then I say the government is morally justified in taking action against the pacifist.

But if the government has the right to force the pacifist to violate his sincerely held moral principles, why is it not right for the government to force the pro-lifer to violate her sincerely held principles? The short and blunt answer is that pacifism is intellectually indefensible while the pro-life position is eminently intellectually defensible. But the pro-choice pacifists won't agree!

Clearly, there are two extremes we must avoid:

E1. If the government may force a citizen to violate (act contrary to) one of his beliefs, then it it may force a citizen to violate any of his beliefs.

E2. The government may not force a citizen to violate any of his beliefs.

The problem, which may well be insoluble, is to find a principled way to navigate between these extremes. But what common principles do we share at this late date in the decline of the West?

Perhaps we can agree on this: the government may legitimately force you to violate your belief if your belief is that infidels are to be put to the sword, but it may not legitimately force you to violate your belief if your belief is that infanticide and involuntary euthanasia are wrong. (Suppose the government demands that all severely retarded children be killed.) But even here there will be dissenting voices. Believe it or not, there are those who argue from the supposed moral acceptability of abortion to the moral acceptability of infanticide. May the Lord have mercy on us.

So what's the solution? The solution is limited government, federalism, and an immigration policy that does not allow people into the country with wildly differing values and moral codes. For example, the Hobby Lobby case would not have come up at all if government kept out of the health care business.

The bigger the government, the more to fight over. But we don't seem to have the will to shrink the government to its legitimate constitutionally-based functions. So expect things to get worse.

Thursday, July 03, 2014

When we got back to our apartment, I turned on my computer to check the news, and learned of the pair of decisions handed down by the Supreme Court. That both decisions are disastrous goes without saying, but I think they have quite different significances.

The Hobby Lobby decision granting to certain businesses the legal right to claim protection of their "religious beliefs" against The Affordable Care Act is by any measure the more grotesque of the two, and Justice Ginsburg is clearly correct in warning that the majority has opened the door to an endless series of meretricious claims of conscience by those fictional persons we call corporations. Only someone with Marx's mordant satirical bent could fully appreciate the decision to confer personhood on corporations while robbing actual persons of the elementary right to medical protection.

I beg to differ. First of all, the SCOTUS decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was not that personhood is to be conferred on corporations. That had already been settled by the Dictionary Act enacted in 1871. Here we read:

The Dictionary Act states that “the words ‘person’ and ‘whoever’ include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.”12

The question the court had to decide was whether closely held, for-profit corporations are persons under the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act . "RFRA states that “[the] Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion.”3 (Ibid.)

If Hobby Lobby is forced by the government to provide abortifacients to its employees, and Hobby Lobby is a person in the eyes of the law, then the government's Affordable Care Act mandate is in violation of the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act. For it would substantially burden Hobby Lobby's proprietors' exercise of religion if they were forced to violate their own consciences by providing the means of what they believe to be murder to their employees. So the precise question that had to be decided was whether Hobby Lobby is a person in the eyes of the law. The question was NOT whether corporations are persons in the eyes of the law. Wolff is wrong if he thinks otherwise.

Note that the issue here is not constitutional but statutory: the issue has solely to do with the interpretation and application of a law, RFRA. As Alan Dershowitz explains (starting at 7:52), it has to do merely with the "construction of a statute."

Not only was the SCOTUS decision not a decision to confer personhood on corporations, it also does not entail "robbing actual persons of the elementary right to medical protection." And this, even if (i) there is a positive right to be given medical treatments, drugs, appliances, and whatnot, and (ii) abortion is a purely medical procedure that affects no person other than a pregnant woman. See Dershowitz.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

As a 'Zone Man,' I am well aware of the dangers of dehydration and heat stroke especially when out for an infernal hike. Although a U.S. gallon of water weighs 8 1/3 lbs, those are pounds I don't leave home without. Some will be surprised to learn that even with water there can be too much of a good thing.

The danger is increased if you drink pure water. Since my reverse osmosis water purifier delivers water that is around 95% pure, I add electrolyte replacements such as Gookinaid to my water or else bring along salty snacks.

In fact, the sort of greasy, salty, sugary crud that you shouldn't eat at home makes for good trail food.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Another post from the old blog, dated 3 November 2006. A redacted version, less crude than the original.

.........

The worst bores in the world are those who subject their listeners to blow-by-blow accounts of their medical procedures. Fear not. I just want to report that I underwent a screening colonoscopy this morning, and that if you are fifty years of age or older, and hitherto 'unscoped,' you should schedule one too.

But don't procrastinate as I did. It is not too much of a hassle. Yesterday I subsisted on clear fluids alone, my last meal being Wednesday's dinner. At four PM I swallowed four Dulocolax tablets and at six began quaffing four liters of a solution ($35 out of pocket, insurance wouldn't cover any part of it due to its one-time consumption) designed for lavage. That term, from Fr. laver and L. lavare, signifies the therapeutic washing out of an organ or orifice. And wash out my lower GI tract it did.

The thought of deep analysis (deeper than sigmoidoscopy) may unnerve some of you, but if your experience is like mine you won't be aware of a thing due to the narcotic cocktail they mainline into your arm. They gave me a bigger shot than I requested, as I wanted to watch the proceedings on the monitor. My last words right after the good Dr. Stein introduced himself and the nurse opened the IV valve were, "Time to be analyzed!"

I refrained from such other prepared witticisms as "Doc, I'm Mabel, if you're able" and philosophical nuggets about wide and narrow 'scope.') I didn't want to cause offense to the sweet nurses who may have been proper Mormons. In no time at all I was floating face-down in the sweet waters of Lethe. Next thing I knew I was putting on my clothes and stumbling out the door with a clean bill of gastroenterological health.

I was too stupefied to remember my prepared parting joke: What did the gastroenterologist say when asked about the meaning of life? "It depends on the liver."

Should I be blogging about a subject like this? Maybe not. But it was no physician who convinced me to get scoped out, but a regular guy in the pool who told me about his experience and how polyps were found.

Maybe it takes a blogger to get you off youranalysandum.

Have I gone on too long, hard by the boundary of boredom? Perhaps. So let me go on a bit more. A physician my own age once recommended a screening colonoscopy. I said, "Have you had one, Doc?" "No, I'm a runner," "Well, I'm a runner too." The doctor's enthymematic argument was bad, but it helped me procrastinate. And my wife once saw him coming out of a fast-food joint. But he was a good practioner and diagnostician. He had a scientific mind, something too many medicos lack.

Who opened cancellation notices all hollow-eyed and bitter sat up spewing the PolitiFact-tested rhetoric of 2010 word wars that promised nothing unfair to anyone rural or citified, and all that jazz . . . .

Friday, December 20, 2013

Liberals spout nonsense about an 'epidemic' of obesity or obesity as a public health problem. True, we Americans are a gluttonous people as witness competitive eating contests, the numerous food shows, and the complete lack of any sense among most that there is anything morally wrong with gluttony. The moralists of old understood something when they classified gluttony as one of the seven deadly sins.

Obesity is not a disease; so, speaking strictly, there cannot be an epidemic of it. There are two separate issues here. One is whether obesity is a disease. Here are some arguments pro et con. But even if it is classified as a disease, it is surely not a contagious disease and so not something there can be an epidemic of.

I know that 'epidemic' is used more broadly than this, even by epidemiologists; but this is arguably the result of an intrusion of liberal ideology into what is supposedly science. Do you really think that 'epidemic' is being used in the same way in 'flu epidemic' and 'obesity epidemic'? Is obesity contagious? If fat Al sneezes in my face, should I worry about contracting the obesity virus? There is no such virus.

Obesity is not contagious and not a disease. I know what some will say: obesity is socially contagious. But now you've shifted the sense of 'contagious.' You've engaged in a bit of semantic mischief. It is not as if there are two kinds of contagion, natural and social. Social contagion is not contagion any more than negative growth is growth or a decoy duck is a duck. 'Social' in 'socially contagious' is an alienansadjective.

Why then are you fat? You are fat because you eat too much of the wrong sorts of food and refuse to exercise. For most people that's all there is to it. It's your fault. It is not the result of being attacked by a virus. It is within your power to be fat or not. It is a matter of your FREE WILL. You have decided to become fat or to remain fat. When words such as 'epidemic' and 'disease' are used in connection with obesity, that is an ideological denial of free will, an attempt to shift responsibility from the agent to factors external to the agent such as the 'evil' corporations that produce so-called 'junk' food.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

The liberal wussification initiative needs ever more victims, ever more government dependents, and ever more sick people. Hence the trend in this therapeutic society to broaden the definition of 'disease' to cover what are obviously not diseases. Need more patients? Define 'em into existence! Theodore Dalrymple talks sense:

There are cheap lies and expensive lies, and the lie that addiction is a disease just like any other will prove to be costly. It is the lie upon which Washington has based its proposed directive that insurance policies should cover addiction and mental disorders in the same way as they cover physical disease. The government might as well decriminalize fraud while it is at it.

The evidence that addiction is not a disease like any other is compelling, overwhelming, and obvious. It has also been available for a long time. The National Institute on Drug Abuse’s definition of addiction as a “chronic, relapsing brain disease” is about as scientific as the advertising claims for Coca-Cola. In fact, it had its origin as a funding appeal to Congress.

To take only one point among many: most addicts who give up do so without any medical assistance—and most addicts do give up. Moreover, they do so at an early age. The proximate cause of their abstinence is their decision to be abstinent. No one can decide not to have rheumatoid arthritis, say, or colon cancer. Sufferers from those diseases can decide to cooperate or not with treatment, but that is another matter entirely. Therefore, there is a category difference between addiction and real disease.

It is amazing how shamelessly blunt the Obaminators are in promoting ObamaYomamaCare. They leave no doubt that pussification and wussification are high on their agenda.

There is also something incoherent about a law that allows these pajama-clad mama's basement dwellers to remain on their parents' health care plans until age 26, when suddenly they are supposed to man up and sign up and pay high premiums for services they don't need (and in some cases cannot need, e.g., maternity care for men) so that old people, who have had an entire lifetime to pile up loot and make provision for old age, and are not saddled with outrageous college loan debt, can get free or subsidized health care.

It doesn't make any bloody sense. On the one hand, young people are given yet another incentive to prolong their adolescence and dependence on parents and not take responsibility for themselves, while on the other hand, they, who are healthy and relatively poor, are expected to bear the lion's share of the health care burden for the old and illness-prone.

My advice to the young: don't allow yourself to be screwed. I know you think Obama is one cool dude, but so is Ron Paul, and he talks sense.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

One cannot insure against an event the probability of which is 1. It violates the very concept of insurance.

I have a homeowner's policy for which I pay about $400 a year. It insures against various adverse events such as fire. Suppose I didn't have the policy and my house catches fire. Do you think I could call up an insurer and buy a policy to cover that preexisting condition? Not for $400. He might, however, sell me a policy on the spot for the replacement value of the house.

Or suppose I am on my deathbed enjoying (if that's the word) my last sunset. Do you think I could buy a $500,000 term life policy for, say, $2 K per annum?

Do you understand the concept of insurance? Do you see how this relevant to ObamaCare? If not, read this.

It is not lost on many of the professionals that they are exactly the sort of people — liberal, concerned with social justice — who supported the Obama health plan in the first place. Ms. Meinwald, the lawyer, said she was a lifelong Democrat who still supported better health care for all, but had she known what was in store for her, she would have voted for Mitt Romney.

It is an uncomfortable position for many members of the creative classes to be in.

“We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.

“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”

Meinwald and Sweeney are learning the hard way that rhetoric and reality are not the same; that central planning doesn't work; that hope and change and impossible dreams are no substitute for careful thought; that cautious, piecemeal reforms are better than "the fundamental transformation of America"; that being well-spoken is not the same as being intelligent; that being black does not qualify one for high office any more than it disqualifies one for it; that 'social justice' is code for collectivist redistribution by redistributors who are immune to the restrictions and hardships they impose on those they rule.

Meinwald, the lawyer, seems not to have exercised the 'due diligence' that such types speak of; how could she not know what to expect when she and her ilk had been warned again and again? And how could a lawyer think that the only way to achieve "better health care for all" is by an inefficient liberty-destroying socialist scheme?

We all want better health care for all. The question is how best to achieve it, and in such a way that it is not just affordable, but high quality and available and does not violate people's liberties or their consciences.

When liberals show that they have understood these simple points, then we can proceed.

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Opposition to Obama's policies is precisely that, opposition to his policies. If you think race has anything to do with it, you are either delusional or lying. One must realize that for a leftist, lying is not wrong if it is in the service of what they take to be a noble end. Mendacity's affront to 'bourgeois' morality is as nothing compared to the wonderful achievement of what they call 'social justice.' This is why Obama and his supporters brazenly lie and lie about their lying, as well as deploying the other modes of untruthfulness. The end justifies the means. They have no qualms of conscience because they don't see what they are doing as wrong. The distress of the five and a half million who have had their insurance policies cancelled is taken in stride as part of the cost of implementing a system that they imagine will serve the common good.

A government big enough and powerful enough to control health care delivery will be in an excellent position to demand ‘appropriate’ behavior from its citizens – and to enforce its demand. Suppose you enjoy risky sports such as motorcycling, hang gliding, mountain climbing and the like. Or perhaps you just like to drink or smoke or eat red meat. A government that pays for the treatment of your injuries and ailments can easily decide, on economic grounds alone, to forbid such activites under the bogus justification, ‘for your own good.’

But even if the government does not outlaw motorcycling, say, they can put a severe dent in your liberty to enjoy such a sport, say, by demanding that a 30% sales tax be slapped on all motorcycle purchases, or by outlawing bikes whose engines exceed a certain displacement, say 180 cc. In the same way that governments levy arbitrary taxes on tobacco products, they can do the same for anything they deem risky or unhealthy.

The situation is analogous to living with one’s parents. It is entirely appropriate for parents to say to a child: ‘As long as you live under our roof, eat at our table, and we pay the bills, then you must abide by our rules. When you are on your own, you may do as you please.’ The difference, of course, is that it is relatively easy to move out on one’s own, but difficult to forsake one’s homeland.

The nub of the issue is liberty. Do you value it or not? And how much? Which trumps which: liberty or equality of outcome?

In other words, Republicans oppose Obama's policies, not the man, because they believe the president will so inexorably change the structure of our social and economic system by mandating and punishing human behavior that nothing less than individual freedom is at stake. Under present circumstances, this hardly seems delusional. Does anyone really believe that subsidized policyholders with pre-existing conditions won't eventually face other mandates and penalties related to their lifestyle choices?

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Americans are beginning to understand that the essence of the Affordable Care Act is that millions of people are being conscripted to buy overpriced insurance they would never choose for themselves in order to afford Mr. Obama monies to spend on the poor and those who are medically uninsurable due to pre-existing conditions. Both Mr. Obama and Republicans are blowing smoke in claiming that the damage done to the individual market by the forced cancellation of "substandard" plans (i.e., those that don't meet the purposes of ObamaCare) can somehow be reversed at this point. It can't be.

The basic idea behind Mr. Obama’s scheme is that government can better handle the complexities of medical care than the market can. Government scientists, technocrats and regulators think they have the collective brainpower to fairly manage a complicated, interconnected health care system and do it for less than businessmen could.

The planners got everything they wanted. They got to write the law without a single Republican looking over their shoulders. They had three years to do it with an essentially unlimited budget. The might of the entire federal government was called in to build HealthCare.gov. With all that, the Obamacare rollout was an epic failure of big government that was worthy of the old Soviet Union.

Obamacare is objectionable both morally and economically. It violates the liberty of the individual and central planning doesn't work.

There is no one top-down Solution. Solutions must be piecemeal and market-based. For starters: tort reform and direct payment by individuals for minor procedures and preventative care (check-ups, blood work, colonoscopies, etc.) Costs will come down just as automotive maintenance costs would skyrocket if oil changes and such were paid by automotive care insurance. Imagine taking your car in for an oil change, paying a $10 copay with the insurance company being billed $200, for what now costs the individual $20.

Monday, November 18, 2013

So, while the president has been telling us that, under the vaunted grandfathering provision, all Americans who like their health-insurance plans will be able to keep them, “period,” his administration has been representing in federal court that most health plans would lose their “grandfather status” by the end of this year. Not just the “5 percent” of individual-market consumers, but close to all consumers — including well over 100 million American workers who get coverage through their jobs — have been expected by the president swiftly to “transition to the requirements under the [Obamacare] regulations.” That is, their health-insurance plans would be eliminated. They would be forced into Obamacare-compliant plans, with all the prohibitive price hikes and coercive mandates that “transition” portends.

Obamacare is a massive fraudulent scheme. A criminal investigation should be opened. Obviously, the Obama Justice Department will not do that, but the House of Representatives should commence hearings into the offenses that have been committed in the president’s deception of the American people. (emphasis added)

The Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2010, ensures that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care and significantly reduces long-term health care costs. This historic legislation, in the league of Social Security and Medicare, will lead to healthier lives, while providing the American people with more liberty to pursue their hopes and dreams.

This is another good example of an Orwellian use of language. Americans love liberty and so Pelosi, in an attempt to deceive, works 'liberty' into her statement, advancing a claim of Orwellian absurdity, namely, that limitations on the liberty of individuals and private entities are in reality enhancements of liberty.

War is peace. Slavery is freedom. Less liberty is more liberty. The Orwellian template: X, which is not Y, is Y.

Obviously, Obamacare entails a reduction in liberty via its various mandates and penalties for not obeying the mandates. There is first of all the individual mandate that requires that citizens buy health insurance or else pay a fine or tax or fee. Obviously, if the government forces you to buy something when you were not forced to buy that thing before, that is a lessening of one's liberty, not an increase of it. There are also employer mandates and HHS mandates. Overview here. I should think that if a man is forced to buy a policy that necessarily includes maternity care, then that is a reduction in cjoice not an enhancement thereof. But maybe I'm wrong and Big Bro is right. Maybe less choice = more choice.

What would Pelosi have to say to be intellectually honest? She would have to admit that on a progressive scheme such as the one she favors, while liberty is a value, liberty is trumped by the value of (material) equality or 'fairness.' Conservatives see it the other way around. This is part of the "conflict of visions," to borrow a very useful phrase from Thomas Sowell.

But instead of being honest, Pelosi and many of the rest of her ilk try to have it both ways at once: more government control of one's life and more liberty.

This is what could be called a STFU moment, Nancy, you either speak the truth, or STFU. Nancy has a right to her vision of an ideal society. But she has no right to her stealth tactics and her Orwellianisms.

I would say the same to Obama. Come clean, my man! Man up! Make the case for your progressive vision and all that it entails: robust, 'energetic' government; increased wealth redistribution via government-controlled health care; a retreat from American exceptionalism; a "fundamental transformation of America." Make the case as best you can and try to respond to the libertarian/conservative objections as best you can. Let's have a 'conversation.' Aren't you guys big on 'conversations'?

But if you try t0 win by cheating and lying and prevaricating and bullshitting, then: STFU. Man up or STFU.

Obama and Pelosi and the Dems want us to trust them. "Just trust us; when the ACA is implemented you will then know what is it and and you will experience its manifold benefits." If Obama would be our collective mama, then we have to be able to trust him or her.

Unfortunately, Obama has lied brazenly about the content of the ACA some 30 times, and then lied about his lying. His supporters have lied and prevaricated and obfuscated as well.

So why should we trust anything Obama or any Dem says from this moment on?

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Liberals are characteristically enthusiastic about doing good with other people's money. But when young, healthy, middle-class liberals discover that the Obamacare redistribution scheme counts them as belonging to the 'other people' who will foot the bill, they become decidedly less enthusiastic.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

I found your most recent post on a right to health care very interesting. It seems to me that much of the discussion of rights, not only about putative rights to health care, but about rights in general, depends on a certain controversial principle, namely:

If x has a right to y, and if z is a means of achieving y, then x has a right to z.

BV: We should distinguish between weaker and stronger versions of the principle:

P1. If x has a right to y, and if z is a means of achieving y, then x has a right to seek to acquire z.

P2. If x has a right to y, and if z is a means of achieving y, then x has a right to be given z.

Consider the following straightforward argument in support of gun rights:

(1) I have a right to life and security of my person. (2) If I have a right to life and security of my person, then I have a right to the means whereby these rights may be secured and protected. (3) Guns may be used to secure and protect my right to life and security of my person. (4) Therefore, I have a right to own a gun.

This seems to me very plausible, but of course (2) relies on the controversial principle identified above.

BV: I would say that the argument relies on (P1) but not (P2).

In similar fashion, any argument for the claim that each of us has a right to health care will probably have to rely on a similar premise. I can imagine an argument going something like this:

(1) I have a right to life and security of my person. (2) If I have a right to life and security of my person, then I have a right to the means whereby these rights may be secured and protected. (3) Affordable health care may be used to secure and protect my right to life and security of my person. (4) Therefore, I have a right to affordable health care.

As before, premise (2) relies on the controversial principle identified earlier. And, as you point out in your post, similar arguments could be run to establish that each of us has a right to food, shelter, and clothing.

BV: But again, all one needs is the weaker principle, (P1). If I have a right to life, then I have a right to sustain my life. A necessary means to that end is food. So I have a right to food. But all that means is that I have a right to seek to acquire food (by hunting, fishing, foraging, growing, buying, bartering, begging, etc.) It does not mean that I have a right to be supplied with food by others. I have no positive right to be fed. What I have is a negative right not to be impeded in my quest for food and other vital necessities. (Adults are under discussion, not young children.)

Here, then, is my question: what ought we to think about the controversial principle?

BV: The first thing we should think about it is that it is ambiguous as between (P1) and (P2). I would say that (P1) is very plausible if not obviously true. But it needs qualification. Do I have a right to biological or chemical weapons? I have the right to repel a home invasion using a shotgun, but presumably not the right to repel such an invasion using biological agents that are likely to spread throughout the neighborhood. So consider

P1*. If x has a (negative) right to y, and z is a minimally efficacious means of achieving y,then x has a (negative) right to acquire z.

By 'minimally efficacious' I mean a means to an end that is an efficient and effective means to the end in view but not so powerful or extensive as to bring with it negative consequences for others. My right to buy food would then not be a right to buy all the food in the supermarket. My right to repel home invaders does not translate into a right to lay waste to the entire neighborhood in so doing. No doubt further refinements are needed, but (P1) strikes me as on the right track.

Although I am inclined to think that the principle is false, what is of interest to me is a more troublesome question. Any false general claim may have true instances. Are there true instances of this false general principle? How do we go about deciding which instances of the principle are true and which not? Can the principle be used to establish gun rights but not rights to health care or food/shelter/clothing?

BV: I should think that guns and butter are on a par. More fully, guns, food, shelter, clothing, certain medicines, bandages, certain medical appliances, e. g. sphygmomanometers for the hypertense, etc. are all on a par. Given that I have the natural negative right to life, then surely I have the right to pursue and acquire those things that I need to defend and sustain my life. What I don't have is the positive right to be given them by others or by the government, especially given the fact that the government produces no wealth but gets its wealth by coercive taking. (Not that I am opposed to governmental coercion, within limits. There simply cannot be a government that is not coercive. I am very pleased that the government has forced Bernie Madoff into prison, thereby doing to him what it would be a crime for me to do to him.)

So I don't think my gun argument suffers from probative overkill, 'proving too much.' The pattern of argument extends to food, shelter, and clothing, etc. But contemporary liberals are in the same boat: their pattern of argument extends to food, shelter, clothing, etc. But their extension does amount to probative overkill and a reductio ad absurdum of their original argument. If there is a positive right to health care services and health insurance (these are of course not the same), then a fortiori, there is a positive right to food, shelter, and clothing. But this is absurd, ergo, etc.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Food, shelter, and clothing are more important than health care in that one can get along for substantial periods of time without health care services but one cannot survive for long without food, shelter, and clothing. Given this plain fact, why don’t the proponents of ‘free’ universal health care demand ‘free’ food, shelter, and clothing? In other words, if a citizen, just in virtue of being a citizen, has a right to health care, why doesn’t the same citizen have the right to what is more fundamental, namely, food, shelter, and clothing?

I mean this as a reductio ad absurdum. I fear that liberals, being liberals, may just bite the bullet and embrace rights to food, shelter, and clothing.

Why isn't health care a commodity in the way that automotive care is? If I want my car to run well, I must service it periodically. I can either do this myself or hire someone to do it for me. But surely I have no right to the free services of an auto mechanic. Of course, once I contract with a mechanic to do a specified job for a specified sum of money, then I have a right to his services and to his services being performed correctly. But that right is contingent upon our contract. Call it a contractually acquired right. But I have no right to free automotive services just in virtue of the fact that I own a car. So why is it any different with my body? Do I have a right to a colonoscopy just in virtue of my possession of a gastrointestinal tract?

Of course, I have a right to life, and I cannot live without health care most of which, by the way, I provide for myself via proper diet, exercise, and all the rest. But the negative right to life does not entail the positive right to be given the services of doctors and dentists.

If you insist that people do have a right to medical and dental services, then you owe us an explanation of why they do not also have a right to food, shelter, and clothing, as well as to a vast array of other things that they 'need' such as cars and cell phones.

I've heard the fatuous Hillary say that health care is not a privilege but a right. First of all, who ever said it was a privilege? Second, it needs arguing that it is a right. And good luck with that. Besides, it is the fallacy of false alternative to say or imply that health care is either a right or a privilege. It might be some third thing.

My view is that health care is a commodity. You either provide it for yourself or you hire someone to provide it for you. In the latter case, you must pay for it. It is no different in principle from housing. Just as there is a 'housing market' there is a 'health care market.' If there were a right to health care, then there would also be a right to housing. But there is no right to housing. Therefore, there is no right to health care. Do Obama and his ilk have a reasoned response to this argument?

Talk of this and that as a right is mostly empty blather. One ought to reflect on what it could mean to call something a right.

Rights and duties are correlative. My right to X generates in others the duty to either provide me with X or not interfere with my possession or exercise of X. Thus my right to life induces in others the duty or obligation to refrain from injuring or killing me. So if I have a right to health care, then others have the duty to provide me with it. Think about that. But who are those others? The government? The government has no money of its own; its revenue comes from taxing the productive members of society. But why are these productive citizens under any obligation to provide 'free' services to anyone? Taxation is by its very nature coercive. How does one justify morally the taking by force of money from one person to give it to another? Why should productive citizens who take care of themselves pay for those who abuse their bodies? There is also the practical question of whether the productive will allow themselves to be fleeced. Not to mention the fact that the government infantilizes the population by doing for them what they ought to be doing for themselves and removing their incentives to taking care of themselves.

Government should do no harm. Primum non nocere. But a government that weakens and unmans its citizens, turning them into dependents on the state, does harm. This is entirely consistent with people caring about one another and taking care of one another within the free associations of civil society that lie between the individual and Leviathan. It is also consistent with a modicum f regulation, oversight, and mandating from the side of the state to prevent the truly needy from ending up on the skids.

If we meet in the desert and you are out of water and food, I will give you some of mine, ceteris paribus. But I am under no moral obligation to help you; you have no right to my supplies. My helping you will be supererogatory and reflective of my being an especially nice guy. Similarly, you have no right to insurance or medicine or a pap smear or a sigmoidoscopy, and I have no obligation to contribute via taxation so that you may get these things.

Nor do you have any right to contraceptives or abortifacients to be supplied at taxpayer expense. Besides, forcing people to pay for what violates their moral sensibility is a moral outrage. Abortion is a very great evil even if liberals are too morally obtuse and willfully stupid to understand it.

Positive rights, rights to be given this or that, need arguing, but I hear precious little by way of argument from liberals.

A government big enough and powerful enough to provide one with ‘free’ health care will be in an excellent position to demand ‘appropriate’ behavior from its citizens – and to enforce its demand. Suppose you enjoy risky sports such as motorcycling, hang gliding, mountain climbing and the like. Or perhaps you just like to drink or smoke or eat red meat. A government that pays for the treatment of your injuries and ailments can easily decide, on economic grounds alone, to forbid such activites under the bogus justification, ‘for your own good.’

But even if the government does not outlaw motorcycling, say, they can put a severe dent in your liberty to enjoy such a sport, say, by demanding that a 30% sales tax be slapped on all motorcycle purchases, or by outlawing bikes whose engines exceed a certain displacement, say 180 cc. In the same way that governments levy arbitrary taxes on tobacco products, they can do the same for anything they deem risky or unhealthy.

The situation is analogous to living with one’s parents. It is entirely appropriate for parents to say to a child: ‘As long as you live under our roof, eat at our table, and we pay the bills, then you must abide by our rules. When you are on your own, you may do as you please.’ The difference, of course, is that it is relatively easy to move out on one’s own, but difficult to forsake one’s homeland.

The nub of the issue is liberty. Do you value it or not? And how much? Which trumps which: liberty or equality of outcome?

Then there are the practical considerations. Nationalized health care in the UK and Canada doesn't seem to work very well. See here. Apparently some Brits pull their own teeth with such advanced dental appliances as pliers and vodka. That was the way dentistry was done in the days of Doc Holliday who was, as you know, a dentist besides being a damned good shot.

If you want to make sure every healthy person paying low rates in the individual market right now can keep their [sic] plan, then you have two choices. One is to abolish Obamacare altogether, which means making it impossible for people with preexisting conditions to get affordable insurance. Clinton doesn’t want to do that — he continues to endorse the law. The second is to come up with some other source of funding to compensate insurance companies for their losses. Clinton doesn’t say where that money would come from.

When Clinton delivered a well-received speech at the Democratic National Convention last summer, President Obama joked he should appoint the former president as “Secretary of Explaining Stuff.” Of course, if he actually had a job like that, he would be fired within days.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013

For liberal scumbaggery and dumbassery, it is hard to beat Ed Schultz. This is the guy who called the sweet and loveable and ladylike Laura Ingraham a "right-wing slut." Now he is saying that the health plans that Obamacare will outlaw are 'crappy.'

If so, there must be some one standard relative to which they are adjudged 'crappy.' But what is that standard, and who sets it? Is maternity care built into the standard? But maternity is not in my future, or in my past for that matter. And if you are a woman past a certain age, or a nun of any age, maternity is not in your future either.

Primary care physicians advise their patients to have colonoscopies starting at the age of 50. Suppose you are a healthy 27-year-old runner who thrives on a fiber-rich diet. You and Sir Thomas Crapper are on most excellent terms. Your policy does not cover colonoscopies, let us assume. Does that make it 'crappy'? Not at all. It makes it reasonable. Why buy what you don't need?

So what would be a crappy plan for one person might not be for another. It depends on age, sex, and other factors.

Who is to decide? Obviously, the person in question or the person's parent or guardian. Not the government.

So here is the nub of the issue. The government has no right to force you to buy health care or health insurance (not the same, by the way), or anything else. Whether you buy and what you buy is your business. Or do you think that the citizen-state relation is or is closely analogous to the child-parent relation?

The various mandates (individual, employer, HHS) are egregious assaults upon individual liberty and upon the mediating structures of civil society such as private enterprises, clubs, fraternal associations, and churches. (In a later post I plan to talk about contraceptives and abortifacients and the assault on religious liberty.)

So do you value liberty? Or do you want an Obama-style "fundamental transformation" of our country in the direction of a collectivist nanny-state? We are well on the way to it already. How far do you want to go?

Let us understand what is fundamentally at issue here. Let's not get hung up on details such as those pertaining to the inasupicious 'rollout' of ObamaCare. We need clarity as to the "conflict of visions" ( T. Sowell) of Right and Left.

But we can't have clarity as long as Obama and his defenders lie and bullshit and prevaricate. The latter include Feinstein, Pelosi, and Wasserman-Schultz.

So, Mr President, please tell us forthrightly what your vision for America is. Don't lie to us, or try to trick or fool us or try achieve your ends by stealth.

Then and only then can we have the 'conversation' -- to use a nice squishy bien-pensant liberal word -- we need to have about the direction of the country.

Monday, November 04, 2013

The left-leaning Washington Post awarded President Obama four, count 'em, four pinocchios, its highest (dis)honor, for the repeatedly told lie for which he is now notorious. In one of its variations, it goes like this: “And if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in the future.”

Now the sense of Obama's assertion in all its variations is clear. But when Bob Schieffer asked Senator Dianne Feinstein On Face the NationSunday morning about Obama's statements, she offered the following interpretation of its sense (at 6:06): "You can keep it [your health plan] up to the time the bill is enacted; after that it's a different story."

You heard right.

Now that is mendacity at its most creative. It is an example of an Orwellian misuse of language: semantic subversion by semantic inversion. 'True freedom is enslavement to the state." "Welfare is self-reliance." "War is peace."

And Feinstein's "Obamacare law will allow you to keep your doctor and health plan but only until the bill becomes law."

Did Schieffer call Feinstein on her outrageous insult to the intelligence of the American people? Watch the video and find out.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Too many conservative commentators are focusing on the inessential and the peripheral. Yes, Obama is a brazen liar, a bullshitter, and a consummate Orwellian abuser of the English language. He lied when he said that those who like their plans can keep their plans, and it is obvious why he lied: the ACA probably would not have gotten through otherwise. But the important issue is not Obama and his mendacity. It is not about Obama, which is also why it is perfectly lame, besides being slanderous, for the scumbaggers on the Left to accuse opponents of the ACA of racism. The fundamental issue is the assault on individual liberty and the totalitarian expansion of the state. That assault and this expansion don't have a skin color, white, black, or mulatto.

Mark Steyn got it right back in 2009 in an NRO piece that is no longer available. (Damn you, NRO! Links to high-quality content ought to be permalinks.) Excerpts
(emphasis added):

. . . [nationalized] health
care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. That’s
its attraction for an ambitious president: It redefines the relationship between
the citizen and the state in a way that hands all the advantages to statists —
to those who believe government has a legitimate right to regulate human affairs
in every particular. [. . .]

It’s often argued that, as a
proportion of GDP, America spends more on health care than countries with
government medical systems. But, as a point of fact, “America” doesn’t
spend anything on health care: Hundreds of millions of people make hundreds of
millions of individual decisions about what they’re going to spend on health
care. Whereas up north a handful of bureaucrats determine what Canada
will spend on health care — and that’s that: Health care is a government budget
item. [. . .]

How did the health-care debate
decay to the point where we think it entirely natural for the central government
to fix a collective figure for what 300 million freeborn citizens ought to be
spending on something as basic to individual liberty as their own
bodies?

Are you willing to
sell your birthright, liberty, for a mess of pottage? That's the issue.
Liberals are a strange breed of cat. They'll puke their guts out in defense of
their 'right' to abortion and their 'right' to violate every norm of decency in
pursuit of the 'artistic' expression of their precious and vacuous selves, but
when it comes to the right to be in control of the sorts of care their bodies
receive they reverse course and surrender their liberties.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

For all of the Affordable Care Act's technical problems, at least one part is working on schedule. The law is systematically dismantling the individual insurance market, as its architects intended from the start.

The millions of Americans who are receiving termination notices because their current coverage does not conform to Health and Human Services Department rules may not realize this is by design. Maybe they trusted President Obama's repeated falsehood that people who liked their health plans could keep them. But Americans should understand that this month's mass cancellation wave has been the President's political goal since 2008. Liberals believe they must destroy the market in order to save it.

I'm sorry, but I feel no sympathy for the liberals who supported ObamaCare and then were shocked when their premiums skyrocketed. They say things like, "I was all for ObamaCare but I didn't think I'd be paying for it." Well, who did you well-off liberal dumbasses think was going to pay for it? Now that you've been kicked in the balls by reality you might consider getting your heads out of your feel-good asses long enough to start thinking for a change about what this lying left-wing fascist is doing to our country. Most of what he says is bullshit and shuck-and-jive, but he meant it when he spoke of fundamentally transforming America.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Some object to the popular 'Obamacare' label given that the official title of the law is 'Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act' or, as commonly truncated, 'Affordable Care Act.' But there is a good reason to favor the popular moniker: it is descriptive where the other two labels are evaluative, expressing as they do a pro attitude toward the bill.

Will the law really protect patients? That is an evaluative judgment based on projections many regard as flimsy. Will the law really make health care affordable? And for whom? Will care mandated for all be readily available and of high quality?

Everybody wants affordable and readily available health care of high quality for the greatest number possible. The question is how best to attain this end. The 'Affordable Care Act' label begs the question as to whether or not Obama's bill will achieve the desired end. 'Obamacare' does not. It is, if not all that descriptive, at least evaluatively neutral.

If Obama's proposal were referred to as "Socialized Medicine Health Care Act' or 'Another Step Toward the Nanny State Act,' people would protest the negative evaluations embedded in the titles. Titles of bills ought to be neutral.

Proponents of a consumption tax sometimes refer to it as a fair tax. Same problem. 'Fair' is an evaluative term while 'consumption' is not. 'Consumption tax' conveys the idea that taxes should be collected at the consuming end rather than at the income-producing end. 'Fair tax' fails to convey that idea, but what is worse, it begs the question as to what a fair tax would look like. It is a label that invites the conflation of distinct questions: What is a consumption tax? Is it good? Answer the first and it remains an open question what the answer to the second is.

What is fairness? What is justice? Is justice fairness? These are questions that need to be addressed, not questions answers to which ought to be presupposed.

There is no good reason to object to 'Obamacare' -- the word, not the thing.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Neither. I am told that the consumption of paleolithic vittles conduces to weight loss. Maybe it does. But I say unto you: What doth it profit a man to lose weight if he suffereth the clogging of his arteries? On the other hand, you are not going to take away my olive oil and nuts.

So I'm sticking with the Mediterranean diet as a via media between the extremes. But don't make a religion of this stuff. Brother Jackass needs to be kept in shape. Well maintained, he will carry you and your worldly loads over many a pons ansinorum. But don't expect him to convey you to the summum bonum.

Avoid fads and extremes. Where is the extremist Nathan Pritikin now? Long dead. A little butter won't kill you. Use common sense. Eat less, move more. Keep things in perspective. Just one pornographic movie can damage your soul irreparably, but one greasy double bacon cheeseburger will have no adverse effect on your body worth talking about. And fight the nanny-staters and food fascists every chance you get. More on this in the related entries infra.

Monday, June 18, 2012

(CBS News) New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg shrugged off criticism of his controversial public health initiatives, saying that "if government's purpose isn't to improve the health and longevity of its citizens, I don't know what its purpose is." [emphasis added.]

Bloomberg most recently put forth a plan to ban the sale of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces from the city's eateries, street carts and stadiums. The proposal has been sharply criticized, in some cases by beverage and fast food companies as a case of government overreach.

He's also been criticized for previous efforts to, among other things, ban smoking in public places and the use of trans-fats in restaurant foods. Some have gone so far as to mock has as being like a "nanny."

But on "CBS This Morning," Bloomberg fired back, saying, "We're not here to tell anybody what to do. But we certainly have an obligation to tell them what's the best science and best medicine says is in their interest.

In this startlingly incoherent outburst, Bloomberg betrays the liberal nanny-state mentality in as direct a way as one could wish. And it is incoherent. He wants to ban large drinks, pop corn, milk shakes and what all else while assuring us that "we're not here to tell anybody what to do." He blatantly contradicts himself. Does the man think before he speaks?

But the deeper problem is that he has no notion of the legitimate functions of government. Apparently he has never heard of limited government. Border control is a legitimate constitutionally grounded function of government. One reason the borders must be controlled is to impede the spread of contagious diseases. So government does have some role to play in the health and longevity of citizens. Defense of the country against foreign aggressors is also a legitimate function of government and it too bears upon health and longevity: it is hard to live a long and healthy life when bombs are raining down.

Beyond this, it is up to the individual to live in ways that insure health and longevity if those are values for him. But they might not be. Some value intensity of life over longevity of life. Rod Serling, for example, lived an extremely intense and productive life. Born in 1925, he died in 1975 at age 50. His Type A behavior and four-pack a day cigarette habit did him in, but was also quite possibly a necessary condition of his productivity. That was his free choice. No government has the right to dictate that one value longevity over intensity.

A government big enough and powerful enough to provide one with ‘free’ health care will be in an excellent position to demand ‘appropriate’ behavior from its citizens – and to enforce its demand. Suppose you enjoy risky sports such as motorcycling, hang gliding, mountain climbing and the like. Or perhaps you just like to drink or smoke or eat red meat. A government that pays for the treatment of your injuries and ailments can easily decide, on economic grounds alone, to forbid such activites under the bogus justification, ‘for your own good.’

But even if the government does not outlaw motorcycling, say, they can put a severe dent in your liberty to enjoy such a sport, say, by demanding that a 30% sales tax be slapped on all motorcycle purchases, or by outlawing bikes whose engines exceed a certain displacement, say 250 cc. In the same way that governments levy arbitrary punitive taxes on tobacco products, they can do the same for anything they deem risky or unhealthy.

The situation is analogous to living with one’s parents. It is entirely appropriate for parents to say to a child: ‘As long as you live under our roof, eat at our table, and we pay the bills, then you must abide by our rules. When you are on your own, you may do as you please.’ The difference, of course, is that it is relatively easy to move out on one’s own, but difficult to forsake one’s homeland.

Friday, June 15, 2012

The trouble with nanny-state liberals is that they do not understand or value the liberty of the individual , a liberty which includes the liberty to behave in ways that may be foolish. If you grant the state the power to order your life there will be no end to it. Right now, in Germany it is illegal to homeschool one's own children! Every day brings a new example of governmental overreach. We do not exist for the state; the state exists for us. Our wealth is ours, not the state's. We don't have to justify our keeping; they have to justify their taking. The same goes for such health-related issues as obesity.

Please no liberal nonsense about an 'epidemic' of obesity or obesity as a public health problem. True, we Americans are a gluttonous people as witness competitive eating contests, the numerous food shows, and the complete lack of any sense among most that there is anything morally wrong with gluttony. The moralists of old understood something when they classified gluttony as one of the seven deadly sins.

Obesity is not a disease; so, speaking strictly, there cannot be an epidemic of it. There are two separate issues here. One is whether obesity is a disease. Here are some arguments pro et con. But even if it is classified as a disease, it is surely not a contagious disease and so not something there can be an epidemic of.

I know that 'epidemic' is used more broadly than this, even by epidemiologists; but this is arguably the result of an intrusion of liberal ideology into what is supposedly science. Do you really think that 'epidemic' is being used in the same way in 'flu epidemic' and 'obesity epidemic'? Is obesity contagious? If fat Al sneezes in my face, should I worry about contracting the obesity virus? There is no such virus.

Obesity is not contagious and not a disease. I know what some will say: obesity is socially contagious. But now you've shifted the sense of 'contagious.' You've engaged in a bit of semantic mischief. It is not as if there are two kinds of contagion, natural and social. Social contagion is not contagion any more than negative growth is growth or a decoy duck is a duck. 'Social' in 'socially contagious' is an alienansadjective.

Why then are you fat? You are fat because you eat too much of the wrong sorts of food and refuse to exercise. For most people that's all there is to it. It's your fault. It is not the result of being attacked by a virus. It is within your power to be fat or not. It is a matter of your FREE WILL. You have decided to become fat or to remain fat. When words such as 'epidemic' and 'disease' are used in connection with obesity, that is an ideological denial of free will, an attempt to shift responsibility from the agent to factors external to the agent such as the 'evil' corporations that produce so-called 'junk' food.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

I'd rather toil up Heart Attack Hill than put away one of these bad boys. It would take about 80 miles of hiking to burn off the calories from just one of these burgers if you have the fries and milkshake as well. Up for an 80-miler?

Nanny-state liberals would use the power of the state to shut down restaurants like this. That is the trouble with contemporary liberals: they do not understand or value the liberty of the individual , a liberty which includes the liberty to behave in ways that many of us consider foolish. If you grant the state the power to order your life there will be no end to it. Right now, in Germany it is illegal to homeschool one's own children! Every day brings a new example of governmental overreach. We do not exist for the state; the state exists for us. Our wealth is ours, not the state's. We don't have to justify our keeping; they have to justify their taking.

Please no liberal nonsense about an 'epidemic' of obesity or obesity as a public health problem. True, we Americans are a gluttonous people as witness competitive eating contests, the numerous food shows, and the complete lack of any sense among most that there is anything morally wrong with gluttony. The moralists of old understood something when they classified gluttony as one of the seven deadly sins.

Obesity is not a disease; so, speaking strictly, there cannot be an epidemic of it. I know that 'epidemic' is used more broadly than this, even by epidemiologists; but this is arguably the result of an intrusion of liberal ideology into what is supposedly science. Do you really think that 'epidemic' is being used in the same way in 'flu epidemic' and 'obesity epidemic'? Is obesity contagious? If fat Al sneezes in my face, should I worry about contracting the obesity virus? There is no such virus. Obesity is not contagious and not a disease. I know what some will say: obesity is socially contagious. But now you've shifted the sense of 'contagious.' You've engaged in a bit of semantic mischief. It is not as if there are two kinds of contagion, natural and social. Social contagion is not contagion any more than negative growth is growth or a decoy duck is a duck. 'Social' in 'socially contagious' is an alienans adjective.

Why then are you fat? You are fat because you eat too much of the wrong sorts of food and refuse to exercise. For most people that's all there is to it. It's your fault. It is not the result of being attacked from without by a virus. It is within your power to be fat or not. It is a matter of your FREE WILL. You have decided to become fat or to remain fat. When words such as 'epidemic' and 'disease' are used in connection with obesity, that is an ideological denial of free will, an attempt to shift responsibility from the agent to factors external to the agent such as the 'evil' corporations that produce so-called 'junk' food.

There are public health problems, but obesity is not one of them. It is private problem resident at the level of the individual and the family.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

I'm for it: I want everyone to have health care. But the issue is not whether it would be good for all to have adequate health care, the issue is how to approach this goal. I can't see that increasing government involvement in health care delivery is the way to go.

Phrases like 'universal health care' and 'affordable health care' obscure the real issue. Who doesn't want affordable health care for all? If you visit the Democrat Party website you will see that they are for 'affordable health care.' That's highly informative, isn't it? It is like saying that one is for peace and against war. Except for the few in whom bellicosity is as it were hard-wired, everyone wants peace. The issue, however, is how to achieve it and maintain it without surrendering that which is of equal or greater value such as freedom, self-respect, and honor. And there is where the real arguments begin.

Or it is like saying that one is for gun control. Almost everyone wants gun control. I want it, the late Charlton Heston wanted it, Charles Schumer wants it. That's not the issue. The issue concerns the nature and extent of gun control. Or it is like saying one is for government. Except for a handful of anarchists, everyone is for government including libertarians and conservatives. The issue is not whether we will have government. The issue concerns it size and scope, power and limits. When slanderous leftists like Charles Schumer portray conservatives as anti-government we need to call them on their lies.

And note that health care affordability is only one value. Availability and quality are two others. If health care is provided to all 'for free' just what sorts of care will they receive and what will be the quality of that care? What good is a 'free' hip replacement if you have to wait two years in pain before you receive it? Or a 'free' quadruple bypass operation if you are dead by the time your number is called? The Canadian snowbirds I talk to don't give me much encouragement as to the desirability of socialized medicine.

Availability of health care is also affected by the willingness of young people to submit themselves to the rigors of medical school, internship and day-to-day practice. Remove the incentives (high pay, high social standing, professional status and independence) and you can expect fewer entrants into the field. Everyone's being insured will not 'insure' that there will be an adequate number of properly trained health care prroviders.

And 'free' to whom? To the unproductive, no doubt. But why should hard-working middle-class types subsidize the bad behavior of those who refuse to take care of themselves? The primary provider of health care is the (adult) individual, who provides it for himself by taking care of himself: by eating right, getting proper rest, exercising, etc.

The problem here is the liberal mentality. Faced with a problem such as obesity, the liberal wants to classify it as a public health problem -- which is absurd on the face of it. No doubt there arepublic health problems, and some of them are getting worse because of a failure to control the borders; but obesity is an individual problem to be solved (or left unsolved) by the individual and perhaps a few significant others. If obesity counts as a public health problem, then how could any health problem not count as a public health problem?

You can see from this example the totalitarian nature of the Left: it would intrude itself into every aspect of your life. If you let them expand their control of the health care system, they will not rest until they have total control. Power, as Nietzsche understood, does not seek merely to maintain itself but always to expand itself. And then the powers that be will have an ever-expanding rationale for dictating behavior. Ride a motorcycle? Then you must not only wear a helmet, but a full-face helmet. After all, it's for your own good, and since the government pays the bills, they can justify such limitations on liberty on the ground of keeping medical costs down. Eat red meat? The government might not ban it, but they could very easily slap a sort of 'sin' tax on its consumption. The more socialized the health care delivery system, the more justification for such behavior-modifying disincentives and incentives. And so on for any number of activities and dietary preferences.

The liberal cannot imagine a solution to a problem that does not involve an expansion of the power and intrusiveness of government and a concomitant restriction of the liberty of the individual.

Here is the straight skinny on obesity: if you consume more calories than you burn, then you gain weight. If you burn more calories than you consume, then you lose weight. So if you want to lose weight, eat less and move more. Try it. It works. Of course there are people with special conditions. But I'm talking about the general run of the population. For the most part, people are fat because they refuse to discipline themselves. Liberals aid and abet them in their indiscipline. I am tempted to say that that is part of the very definition of a liberal. The liberal tendency is to shift responsibility from the agent and displace it onto factors external to the agent. So it's Burger King's fault that you have clogged arteries, not your fault.

The problem with liberals is not that they are stupid, but thay they stupefy themselves with their political correctness. The profiling question is a good example of this. Anyone with common sense can see that profiling is an effective and morally acceptable means of both preventing crimes and apprehending criminals once crimes have been committed. But the liberal tendency is to oppose it. Since these opponents don't have a logical leg to stand on, one is justified in psychologizing them.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

There is a caucus of GOP physicians in the House of Representatives. Here they reflect on ObamaCare's first year. It's good that there are M.D.s in the Congress. Negatively, physicians are not lawyers. Positively, they are scientifically trained without being mere theoreticians: they diagnose, they cut, they sew. They are the plumbers and the auto mechanics of the human body. They grapple at close quarters with recalcitrant matter. They don't just talk, write, and argue. Not that the latter aren't important; they are. But balance is also important.

We need more doctors, engineers, and businessmen in government -- and fewer lawyers. And a few working stiffs, too. There are truck drivers and pipe fitters who could do the job. How can a government top-heavy with lawyers be representative of the folks?

Monday, January 24, 2011

An inspiration. Brother Jackass will carry you over many a pons asinorum for many a year if properly fueled and disciplined. Reform your diet and set aside two to three hours per day for vigorous exercise. Lalanne swam an hour a day and lifted weights for two. Right up until the end. And he always 'went to failure' doing his reps until he could do no more.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Since, for me, exploring the concepts of 'health' and 'disease' is a minor hobby, I couldn't resist commenting on your recent "How to Lose Weight." While I agree with what I take to be your moral point, I think your argument goes off the rails when you consider the "disease status" of obesity.

For what it's worth, 'obesity' has traditionally been used by the medical community to refer to an overweight condition that is pathological, i.e., that interferes with natural functional processes. I know that colloquially 'disease' is a much narrower category than 'medical pathology,' but it's because diseases are pathological conditions that they contrast with the condition of healthfulness. That obesity (usually) results from voluntary acts and/or omissions isn't relevant to it's status as a pathological condition. And, of course, even if the fact that something is a pathological condition is sufficient to mobilize medical concern (questionable in itself...), it isn't enough to underwrite political action!

Bob makes an excellent point here. Since I am always going on about the importance of using terms precisely, I have to accept his point that 'obesity' used as a (relatively) precise medical term stands for a pathological condition, and is therefore a disease, despite the fact that it results from voluntary acts and omissions. So I should agree, contrary to what I said earlier, that there is an epidemic of obesity. But I stand pat on the point that there is no call for political action, a point on which Bob seems to agree.